Book review: WSU professor Lawrence Pintak’s ‘Lessons from the Mountaintop’ shares lessons from world religions

Lawrence Pintak’s “Lessons from the Mountaintop: Ten Modern Mystics and Their Extraordinary Lives” is an impressive work of participatory journalism.

Pintak, “an avid student of the perennial truths at the core of the world’s religions,” not only journeys far to meet and converse with modern mystics. The Washington State University professor and founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, often accompanied by his wife Indira, also respectfully participates for a while in the modes of mysticism on which he reports. He encourages respect for a wide variety of mysticisms and engages his readers in his quest for perennial truths.

The range of mystics Pintak encounters is amazing. Through him readers meet, for example, a Sufi devotee in the tradition of Rumi, the great medieval poet; a Catholic Christian monk who also practices Zen Buddhism; a Jewish bard adept in feminist Kabbala midrash; Tibetan Buddhists; Hindu sages; and a former Druid priestess.

Though the range is great, there’s a certain sameness among the testimony of these mystics, perhaps not surprising given Pintak’s quest for perennial truths. To me, who lacks deep familiarity with any of their traditions, they all sound vaguely Buddhist, emphasizing as they do the need to do away with dualism, to lose the ego in the all by practicing mindfulness.

The sameness is also perhaps owing to most of the mystics being from the U.S., England or Australia. Several have spent time in India but have migrated back home. The Sufi, originally from New York City, spent the last years of his life among the dervishes of Istanbul. That most of those with whom Pintak converses speak English eases his learning experiences.

Pintak and we readers can learn from these mystics because they have come down from their physical and spiritual mountaintops, or, in a couple of instances, out of their caves that served as loci for meditation and empowerment.

They come down, come out so they can help others along their paths, in their lives. The mystics thus practice the compassion that their faith traditions advocate.

One of the most impressive mystics who does so is Michael Holleran. After years as a Carthusian monk devoted to silent meditation in France, he comes to New York City where he ministers to those suffering from AIDS and becomes a gay rights activist.

He remains a faithful Catholic, communing with the saints, but in retirement at Notre Dame, expresses concern over the right-wing, nationalistic direction of some young Catholics he is meeting. Contact with the divine, he thinks, should give one compassion for all.

A mystic who dramatically enacts compassion for all is Clear Grace, whom we get to know in Pintak’s last set of interviews. She/they is a queer mixed race “travelling nunc” who leaves the enlightening compounds overseen by Thich Nhat Hanh to be with the homeless, the poor, the racially and culturally marginalized. While honoring Hanh for his compassion and peacemaking, she became aware that most of his followers were upper-class whites who talked the talk of compassion, but showed little interest in actually practicing it amongst those who needed it most.

Abused and impoverished growing up, Clear Grace feels comfortable among people desperate for companionship, for acknowledgment of their humanity, perhaps through a cup of hot coffee in the morning. For years she traveled in a beat-up Chevy van to hang out with her people. In retirement she lives in Louisiana where her Indigenous and Black and Mexican and white ancestors all commune with her.

The socially engaged work of mystics like Holleran and Clear Grace addresses my concern that mystics are elite escapists. Pintak presented those he interviewed as “an elite band of modern mystics,” possibly not recognizing that the charge of elitism could be used to dismiss what they offer to the world. Elitist mysticism could be compared to the Gnosticism that flourished soon after the death of Jesus. Gnostics believed that only those with special knowledge could participate in the resurrection of Jesus. The rest of us are left in the dead dark.

In conclusion, Pintak offers some “Lessons” that he argues all world religions give us. These include “We are all part of universal consciousness”; “We are all connected”; and “All roads lead to the mountain.”

I would add that while all roads may lead to the mountain, it is important to follow a specific road, a specific religious tradition, to get there. The American Sufi mystic converted to Islam, and is saddened that Pintak hasn’t also. Even if the religious tradition is ultimately left behind on the journey toward universal truth, the tradition prepares the way for the final enlightenment.

For example, in the chapter “Beyond Druid,” we hear of a woman who while ultimately questioning the animism of this tradition as too anthropocentric, was encourage by it to seek a “thin place” where she could experience and share with others the spirit that will take us beyond death.

Pintak’s “Lessons from the Mountaintop” may encourage readers of many roads to keep on moving to achieve enlightenment and be compassionate.